Return to the National Gallery and refurbishment of Room 32
Goodness it was good to be back! One of the last things I’d done in London pre-lockdown was to rush round the gallery and take a look at the Titian exhibition. It was therefore important to me, exactly four calendar months later, for the gallery to be the first central London thing I returned to. OK it does feel different but in some ways it felt better. There is lots of space and it Is all really well organised. There are arrows on the floor to guide you round three different routes round the gallery but no-one shouts if you go the wrong was around a room or zig zag across to make sure you don’t miss anything. You are asked to wear a mask and I did for most of it, some people didn’t but because there was lots of room you didn’t feel intimidated by that. Going round in a prescribed way makes you look at everything rather than flitting to your favourites and you see work in a new way. Toilets were easy and I loved the sign by the Sainsbury wing ones to warn you that the next one was after 900 years of art! There was take away coffee and a few benches to sit on in the café to drink it but I suspect those would soon fill up.
It was a nice touch that there were a few different things the most noticeable being the refurbishment of the great long gallery now called the Julia and Hans Rausing Room. It has been taken back to its original Edward M Barry design with the lunettes repainted in their original colours with the names of the artists in them and the walls recovered in dark red cloth. Reading the small display in a side room about it you realise the floor and metal grills for the ventilation system are all new too. There is also a helpful picture of how it looked before as I had certainly forgotten.
There were also some new acquisitions and loans highlighted. A lot of the loans are from the Courtauld which is shut for refurbishment but there were also some loans from private collections including two beautiful Dutch flowers paintings. New acquisitions included a portrait of Margaret Gainsborough painted by her father which hangs poignantly with two pictures of her and her sister as children; a lovely Sorolla called The Drunkard currently in the late 19th century room but it would be fun to see it hung with the Velazquez and a bright yellow Pissarro of the meadow beyond his garden playing with the pointillist style.
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